THE author of "Greyslaer," "Wild Scenes in the Forest and the Prairie," etc., is a brother of the Honourable OGDEN HOFFMAN, and a son of the late eminent lawyer of the same name.* He is the child of a second marriage. His maternal grandfather was JOHN FENNO, of Philadelphia, one of the ablest political writers of the old Federal party, during the administration of WASHINGTON. The family, which is a numerous one in the state of New York, planted themselves, at an early day, in the valley of the Hudson, as appears from the Dutch records of PETER STUYVESANT'S storied reign.

Mr. HOFFMAN was born in New York, in the year 1806. He was sent to a Latin grammarschool in that city, when six years old, from which, at the age of nine, he was transferred to the Poughkeepsie academy, a seminary upon the Hudson, about eighty miles from New York, which at that time enjoyed great reputation. The harsh treatment he received here induced him to run away, and his father, finding that he had not improved under a course of severity, did not insist upon his return, but placed him under the care of an accomplished Scottish gentleman in one of the rural villages of New Jersey. During a visit home from this place, and when about twelve years of age, he met with an injury which involved the necessity of the immediate amputation of the right leg, above the knee. The painful circumstances are minutely detailed in the New York 64 Evening Post," of the twenty-fifth of October, 1817, from which it appears, that while, with other lads, attempting the dangerous feat of leaping aboard a steamer as she passed a pier, under full way, he was caught between the vessel and the wharf. The steamer swept by, and left him clinging by his hands to the pier, crushed in a manner too frightful for description. This deprivation, instead of acting as a disqualification for the manly sports of youth, and thus turning the subject of it into a retired student, seems rather to have given young HOFFMAN an especial ambition to excel in swimming, riding, etc., to the still further neglect of perhaps more useful acquire

ments.

When fifteen years old, he entered Columbia College, and here, as at preparatory schools, was noted rather for success in gymnastic exercises

Judge HOFFMAN was, in early life, one of the most distinguished advocates at the American bar. He won his first cause in New Jersey at the age of seventeen; the illness of counsel or the indulgence of the court giving him the opportunity to speak. At twenty-one he succeeded his father as representative, from New York, in the state legislature. At twenty-six he filled the office of attorney-general; and thenceforth the still youthful pleader was often the successful competitor of HAMIL TON, BURR, PINKNEY, and other professional giants, for the highest honours of the legal forum.

than in those of a more intellectual character. His reputation, judging from his low position in his class, contrasted with the honours that were awarded him by the college-societies at their anniversary exhibitions, was greater with the students than with the faculty, though the honorary degree of Master of Arts, conferred upon him under peculiarly gratifying circumstances, after leaving the institution in his third or junior year, without having graduated, clearly implies that he was still a favourite with his alma mater.*

Immediately after leaving college-being then eighteen years old--he commenced the study of the law with the Honourable HARMANUS BLEECKER, of Albany, now Charge d'Affaires of the United States at the Hague. When twenty-one, he was admitted to the bar, and in the succeeding three years he practised in the courts of the city of New York. During this period he wrote anonymously for the New York American--having made his first essay as a writer for the gazettes while in Albany--and I believe finally became associated with Mr. CHARLES KING in the editorship of that paper. Certainly he gave up the legal profession, for the successful prosecution of which he appears to have been unfitted by his love of books, society, and the rod and gun. His feelings at this period are described in some rhymes, entitled "Forest Musings," from which the following stanzas are quoted, to show the fine relish for forest-life and scenery which has thrown a peculiar charm around every production from his pen :-

And bubbles round the lily's cup
From lurking trout come coursing up,
The doe hath led her fawn to drink;

While, scared by step so near,
Uprising from the sedgy brink
The lonely bittern's cry will sink
Upon the startled ear.

And thus upon my dreaming youth,

When boyhood's gambols pleased no more,
And young Romance, in guise of Truth,
Usurp'd the heart all theirs before;

At the first semi-centennial anniversary of the incorporation of Columbia College, the honorary degree Master of Arts was conferred upon FITZ-GREENE HALLECK, WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT, and CHARLES FENNO HOFFMAN.

Thus broke ambition's trumpet-note

On Visions wild,

Yet blithesome as this river

On which the smiling moon-beams float, That thus have there for ages smiled,

And will thus smile forever.

And now no more the fresh green-wood,
The forest's fretted aisles

And leafy domes above them bent,
And solitude

So eloquent!

Mocking the varied skill that's blent

In art's most gorgeous piles

No more can soothe my soul to sleep
Than they can awe the sounds that sweep
To hunter's horn and merriment

Their verdant passes through,
When fresh the dun-deer leaves his scent
Upon the morning dew.

The game's afoot!-and let the chase

Lead on, whate'er my destiny-
Though fate her funeral drum may brace
Full soon for me!

And wave death's pageant o'er me-
Yet now the new and untried world
Like maiden banner first unfurl'd,

Is glancing bright before me!

The quarry soars! and mine is now the sky,
Where, "at what bird I please, my hawk shall fly!"
Yet something whispers through the wood
A voice like that perchance

Which taught the haunter of EGERIA's grove
To tame the Roman's dominating mood

And lower, for awhile, his conquering lance
Before the images of Law and Love-
Some mystic voice that ever since hath dwelt
Along with Echo in her dim retreat,

A voice whose influence all, at times, have felt
By wood, or glen, or where on silver strand
The clasping waves of Ocean's belt

Do clashing meet

Around the land:

It whispers me that soon-too soon
The pulses which now beat so high
Impatient with the world to cope
Will, like the hues of autumn sky,
Be changed and fallen ere life's noon
Should tame its morning hope.
It tells me not of heart betray'd
Of health impair'd,

of fruitless toil,

And ills alike by thousands shared, Of which each year some link is made To add to "mortal coil:"

And yet its strange prophetic tone

So faintly murmurs to my soul

The fate to be my own,

That all of these may be

Reserved for me

Ere manhood's early years can o'er me roll.

Yet why,

While Hope so jocund singeth

And with her plumes the gray-beard's arrow wingeth, Should I

Think only of the barb it bringeth?

Though every dream deceive

That to my youth is dearest,

Until my heart they leave

Like forest leaf when searest

Yet still, mid forest leaves,

Where now

Its tissue thus my idle fancy weaves,

Still with heart new-blossoming

While leaves, and buds, and wild flowers spring,
At Nature's shrine I'll bow;

Nor seek in vain that truth in her
She keeps for her idolater.

Since that time Mr. HOFFMAN has devoted his attention almost constantly to literature. While connected with the "American," he published a series of brilliant articles in that paper, under the signature of a star (*), which attracted much attention. In 1833, for the benefit of his health, he left New York on a travelling tour for the “far west," and his letters, written during his absence, were also first published in that popular journal. They were afterward included in his "Winter in the West," of which the first impression appeared in New York, in 1834, and the second, soon after, in London. This work has passed through many editions, and it will continue to be popular so long as graphic descriptions of scenery and character, and richness and purity of style, are admired. His next work, entitled "Wild Scenes in the Forest and the Prairie," was first printed in 1837, and, like its predecessor, it contains many admirable pictures of scenery, inwoven with legends of the western country, and descriptive poetry. This was followed by a romance, entitled "Greyslaer,” founded upon the famous criminal trial of BEAUCHAMP, for the murder of Colonel SHARPE, the Solicitor-General of Kentucky,-the particulars of which, softened away in the novel, are minutely detailed in the appendix to his "Winter in the West." "Greyslaer" was a successful noveltwo editions having appeared in the author's native city, one in Philadelphia, and a fourth in London, in the same year. It placed him in the front rank of American novelists. He describes in it, with remarkable felicity, American forest-life, and savage warfare, and gives a truer idea of the border contests of the Revolution than any formal history of the period that has been published.

The Knickerbocker magazine was first issued under the editorial auspices of Mr. HOFFMAN. He subsequently became the proprietor of the American Monthly Magazine, (one of the ablest literary periodicals ever published in this country.) and during the long term of which he was the chief editor of this journal, he also, for one year, conducted the New York Mirror, for its proprietor, and wrote a series of zealous papers in favour of international copyright, for the New Yorker, the Corsair, and other journals.

Mr. HOFFMAN published in 1843 « The Vigil of Faith, a Legend of the Andirondack Mountains, and other Poems;" in 1844," Borrowed Notes for Home Circulation," (the title of which was suggested by an article on "The Poets and Poetry of America," in "The Foreign Quarterly Review,") and near the close of 1845, through the house of Harper and Brothers, of New York, the most complete collection that has been printed of his poetical writings. The poetry of Mr. HOFFMAN is graceful and fanciful. No American is comparable to him as a song-writer. Although some of his pieces are exquisitely finished, they have all evidently been thrown off without labour, in moments of feeling. A few of his pieces, in which he has copied the style of "the old and antique song," are equal to the richest melodies of the time of HERRICK and WALLER.

MOONLIGHT ON THE HUDSON.

WRITTEN AT WEST POINT.

I'm not romantic, but, upon my word,

There are some moments when one can't help feeling

As if his heart's chords were so strongly stirr'd
By things around him, that 't is vain concealing
A little music in his soul still lingers,
Whene'er its keys are touch'd by Nature's fingers:

And even here, upon this settee lying,

With many a sleepy traveller near me snoozing, Thoughts warm and wild are through my bosom flying,

Like founts when first into the sunshine oozing: For who can look on mountain, sky, and river, Like these, and then be cold and calm as ever?

Bright Dian, who, Camilla-like, dost skim yon
Azure fields-thou who, once earthward bending,
Didst loose thy virgin zone to young ENDYMION
On dewy Latmos to his arms descending-
Thou whom the world of old on every shore,
Type of thy sex, Triformis, did adore:

Tell me where'er thy silver bark be steering,
By bright Italian or soft Persian lands,
Or o'er those island-studded seas careering,
Whose pearl-charged waves dissolve on coral
strands;

Tell if thou visitest, thou heavenly rover,

A lovelier stream than this the wide world over?

Doth Achelous or Araxes, flowing

Twin-born from Pindus, but ne'er-meeting brothers

Doth Tagus, o'er his golden pavement glowing, Or cradle-freighted Ganges, the reproach of mothers,

The storied Rhine, or far-famed Guadalquiver--
Match they in beauty my own glorious river?

What though no cloister gray nor ivied column
Along these cliffs their sombre ruins rear?
What though no frowning tower nor temple solemn
Of despots tell and superstition here-
What though that mouldering fort's fast-crumbling
walls

Did ne'er enclose a baron's banner'd halls

Its sinking arches once gave back as proud

An echo to the war-blown clarion's peal-As gallant hearts its battlements did crowd As ever beat beneath a vest of steel, When herald's trump on knighthood's haughtiest day

Call'd forth chivalric host to battle-fray:

For here amid these woods did he keep court,
Before whose mighty soul the common crowd
Of heroes, who alone for fame have fought,
Are like the patriarch's sheaves to Heaven's
chosen bow'd-

He who his country's eagle taught to soar,
And fired those stars which shine o'er every shore.

And sights and sounds at which the world have wonder'd

Within these wild ravines have had their birth; Young Freedom's cannon from these glens have thunder'd,

And sent their startling echoes o'er the earth; And not a verdant glade nor mountain hoary But treasures up within the glorious story.

And yet not rich in high-soul'd memories only, Is every moon-kiss'd headland round

gleaming,

Each cavern'd glen and leafy valley lonely,

me

And silver torrent o'er the bald rock streaming: But such soft fancies here may breathe around, As make Vaucluse and Clarens hallow'd ground. Where, tell me where, pale watcher of the night— Thou that to love so oft has lent its soul, Since the lorn Lesbian languish'd 'neath thy light, Or fiery ROMEO to his JULIET stoleTo nurse young love in hearts like theirs to birth? Where dost thou find a fitter place on earth

O, loiter not upon that fairy shore,

To watch the lazy barks in distance glide, When sunset brightens on their sails no more, And stern-lights twinkle in the dusky tideLoiter not there, young heart, at that soft hour, What time the bird of night proclaims love's power. Even as I gaze upon my memory's track,

Bright as that coil of light along the deep,
A scene of early youth comes dream-like back,
Where two stand gazing from yon tide-wash'd
steep-

A sanguine stripling, just toward manhood flushing,
A girl scarce yet in ripen'd beauty blushing.
The hour is his-and, while his hopes are soaring,
Doubts he that maiden will become his bride?
Can she resist that gush of wild adoring,

Fresh from a heart full-volumed as the tide?
Tremulous, but radiant is that peerless daughter
Of loveliness-as is the star-paved water!
The moist leaves glimmer as they glimmer'd then-
Alas! how oft have they been since renew'd!
How oft the whip-poor-will from yonder glen

Each year has whistled to her callow brood! How oft have lovers by yon star's same beam Dream'd here of bliss-and waken'd from their dream!

But now, bright Peri of the skies, descending,

Thy pearly car hangs o'er yon mountain's crest, And Night, more nearly now each step attending, As if to hide thy envied place of rest, Closes at last thy very couch beside, A matron curtaining a virgin bride.

Farewell! Though tears on every leaf are starting: While through the shadowy boughs thy glances quiver,

As of the good when heavenward hence departing,
Shines thy last smile upon the placid river.
So-could I fling o'er glory's tide one ray-
Would I too steal from this dark world away.

THE FOREST CEMETERY.

WILD TAWASENTHA! in thy brook-laced glen
The doe no longer lists her lost fawn's bleating,
As panting there, escaped from hunter's ken,
She hears the chase o'er distant hills retreating;
No more, uprising from the fern around her,

The Indian archer, from his "still-hunt" lair, Wings the death-shaft which hath that moment found her

When Fate seem'd foil'd upon her footsteps there:

Wild Tawasentha! on thy cone-strew'd sod,

O'er which yon Pine his giant arm is bending, No more the Mohawk marks its dark crown nod Against the sun's broad disk toward night descending,

Then crouching down beside the brands that redden
The column'd trunks which rear thy leafy dome,
Forgets his toils in hunter's slumbers leaden,
Or visions of the red man's spirit home:

But where his calumet by that lone fire,

At night beneath these cloister'd boughs was lighted,

The Christian orphan will in prayer aspire,
The Christian parent mourn his proud hope
blighted;

And in thy shade the mother's heart will listen
The spirit-cry of babe she clasps no more,
And where thy rills through hemlock-branches
glisten,

There many a maid her lover will deplore.
Here children link'd in love and sport together,
Who check their mirth as creaks the slow hearse
by,

Will totter lonely in life's autumn weather,

To ponder where life's spring-time blossoms lie; And where the virgin soil was never dinted By the rude ploughshare since creation's birth, Year after year fresh furrows will be printed Upon the sad cheek of the grieving Earth. Yon sun returning in unwearied stages, Will gild the cenotaph's ascending spire, O'er names on history's yet unwritten pages That unborn crowds will, worshipping, admire; Names that shall brighten through my country's story

Like meteor hues that fire her autumn woods, Encircling high her onward course of glory Like the bright bow which spans her mountainfloods.

Here where the flowers have bloom'd and died for ages

Bloom'd all unseen and perish'd all unsung-On youth's green grave, traced out beside the

sage's,

Will garlands now by votive hearts be flung; And sculptur'd marble and funereal urn,

O'er which gray birches to the night air wave,

*Tawasentha-meaning, in Mohawk, "The place of the many dead"-is the finely-appropriate name of the new Forest Cemetery on the banks of the Hudson, between Albany and Troy.

Will whiten through thy glades at every turn,
And woo the moonbeam to some poet's grave!
Thus back to Nature, faithful, do we come,
When Art hath taught us all her best beguiling;
Thus blend their ministry around the tomb
Where, pointing upward, still sits Nature smiling!
And never, Nature's hallow'd spots adorning,
Hath Art, with her a sombre garden dress'd,
Wild Tawasentha! in this vale of mourning
With more to consecrate their children's rest.
And still that stream will hold its winsome way,
Sparkling as now upon the frosty air,
When all in turn sha'l troop in pale array

To that dim land for which so few prepare.
Still wil yon oak, which now a sapling waves,
Each year renew'd, with hardy vigour grow,
Expanding still to shade the nameless graves
Of nameless men that haply sleep below.
Nameless as they-in one dear memory blest,
How tranquil in these phantom-peopled bowers
Could I here wait the partner of my rest

In some green nook that should be only ours; Under o'd boughs, where moist the livelong sum

mer

The moss is green and springy to the tread, When thou, my friend, shouldst be an often comer To pierce the thicket, seeking for my bed: For thickets heavy all around should screen it From careless gazer that might wander near; Nor e'en to him who by some chance had seen it, Would I have aught to catch his eye, appear: One lonely stem-a trunk those old boughs lifting, Should mark the spot; and, haply, new thrift owe To that which upward through its sap was drifting From what lay mouldering round its roots below. The wood-duck there her glossy-throated brood Should unmolested gather to her wings; The schoolboy, awed, as near that mound he stood, Should spare the redstart's nest that o'er it swings, And thrill when there, to hear the cadenced wind

ing

Of boatman's horn upon the distant river,
Dell unto dell in long-link'd echoes binding-
Like far-off requiem, floating on for ever.

There my freed spirit with the dawn's first beaming
Would come to revel round the dancing spray;
There would it linger with the day's last gleaming,
To watch thy footsteps thither track their way.
The quivering leaf should whisper in that hour
Things that for thee alone would have a sound,
And parting boughs my spirit-glances shower
In gleams of light upon the mossy ground.
There, when long years and all thy journeyings

over

Loosed from this world thyself to join the free, Thou too wouldst come to rest beside thy lover In that sweet cell beneath our trysting-tree; Where earliest birds above our narrow dwelling Should pipe their matins as the morning rose, And woodland symphonies majestic swelling, In midnight anthem, hallow our repose.

THE BOB-O-LINKUM.

THOU vocal sprite-thou feather'd troubadour!
In pilgrim weeds through many a clime a ranger,
Com'st thou to doff thy russet suit once more,

And play in foppish trim the masquing stranger?
Philosophers may teach thy whereabouts and nature,
But wise, as all of us, perforce, must think 'em,
The school-boy best hath fix'd thy nomenclature,
And poets, too, must call thee Bob-O-Linkum.
Say! art thou, long mid forest glooms benighted,
So glad to skim our laughing meadows over-
With our gay orchards here so much delighted,
It makes thee musical, thou airy rover?
Or are those buoyant notes the pilfer'd treasure
Of fairy isles, which thou hast learn'd to ravish
Of all their sweetest minstrelsy at pleasure,
And, Ariel-like, again on men to lavish?
They tell sad stories of thy mad-cap freaks
Wherever o'er the land thy pathway ranges;
And even in a brace of wandering weeks,

They say, alike thy song and plumage changes; Here both are gay; and when the buds put forth, And leafy June is shading rock and river, Thou art unmatch'd, blithe warbler of the North, While through the balmy air thy clear notes quiver.

Joyous, yet tender-was that gush of song

Caught from the brooks, where mid its wild flowers The silent prairie listens all day long, [smiling

The only captive to such sweet beguiling; Or didst thou, flitting through the verdurous halls And column'd isles of western groves symphoniLearn from the tuneful woods, rare madrigals, [ous, To make our flowering pastures here harmonious? Caught'st thou thy carol from Otawa maid, [ing, Where, through the liquid fields of wild rice plashBrushing the ears from off the burden'd blade, Her birch canoe o'er some lone lake is flashing? Or did the reeds of some savannah South,

Detain thee while thy northern flight pursuing, To place those melodies in thy sweet mouth, The spice-fed winds had taught them in their wooing?

Unthrifty prodigal!-is no thought of ill

Thy ceaseless roundelay disturbing ever?
Or doth each pulse in choiring cadence still
Throb on in music till at rest for ever?
Yet now in wilder'd maze of concord floating,

"I would seem that glorious hymning to prolong, Old Time in hearing thee might fall a-doating And pause to listen to thy rapturous song!

THE REMONSTRANCE.

You give up the world! why, as well might the sun, When tired of drinking the dew from the flowers, While his rays, like young hopes, stealing off one by one,

Die away with the muezzin's last note from the towers,

Declare that he never would gladden again,

With one rosy smile, the young morn in its birth; But leave weeping Day, with her sorrowful train Of hours, to grope o'er a pall-cover'd earth.

The light of that soul once so brilliant and steady,
So far can the incense of flattery smother,
That, at thought of the world of hearts conquer'd
already,

Like Macedon's madman, you weep for another? O! if sated with this, you would seek worlds untried, And fresh as was ours, when first we began it, Let me know but the sphere where you next will abide,

And that instant, for one, I am off for that planet.

PRIMEVAL WOODS.

YES! even here, not less than in the crowd,
Here, where yon vault in formal sweep seems piled
Upon the pines, monotonously proud,
Fit dome for fane, within whose hoary veil
No ribald voice an echo hath defiled-
Where Silence seems articulate; up-stealing
Like a low anthem's heavenward wail:-
Oppressive on my bosom weighs the feeling
Of thoughts that language cannot shape aloud;
For song too solemn, and for prayer too wild,-
Thoughts, which beneath no human power could
quail,

For lack of utterance, in abasement how'd,—
The cavern'd waves that struggle for revealing.
Upon whose idle foam alone God's light hath smiled.
Ere long thine every stream shall find a tongue,
Land of the Many Waters! But the sound
Of human music, these wild hills among,
Hath no one save the Indian mother flung
Its spell of tenderness? Oh, o'er this ground
So redolent of Feauty, hath there play'd no breath
Of human poesy-none beside the word
Of Love, as, murmur'd these old boughs beneath,
Some fierce and savage suitor it hath stirr'd
To gentle issues-none but these been heard?
No mind, no soul here kindled but my own?
Doth not one hollow trunk about resound
With the faint echoes of a song long flown,
By shadows like itself now haply heard alone?
And Ye, with all this primal growth must go!
And loiterers beneath some lowly spreading shade,
Where pasture-kissing breezes shall, ere then, have

play'd,

A century hence, will doubt that there could grow
From that meek land such Titans of the glade!
Yet wherefore primal? when beneath my tread
Are roots whose thrifty growth, perchance, hath
arm'd

The Anak spearman when his trump alarm'd!
Roots that the Deluge wave hath plunged below;
Seeds that the Deluge wind hath scattered;
Berries that Eden's warblers may have fed;
Safe in the slime of earlier worlds embalm'd:
Again to quicken, germinate and blow, [charm'd.
Again to charm the land as erst the land they